Satanism
by Mariel Nightstalker
Summary: Voldemort's last moments the night the Boy-Who-Lived saved the wizarding world.


SATANISM

He supposed that was what it was. Fate had thrown him so many hurdles, one was bound to lose their mind at some point in the ordeal. The body went on, but there was nobody inside and all that.

"Wormtail, you have done well tonight." He was here, at last. Some stupid so-called Seer had predicted that, of all things, a child would defeat him and he wasn't taking any chances. He killed so many children, both directly and through his minions, that he didn't mind doing so with an actual reason behind it. He should probably kill the parents too, while he was at it, so they didn't track him down afterwards and try to kill him out of revenge. Not that they would even get close, but such things were very tiresome after over ten occurrences and very inconvenient.

He had first realized that he worshipped the Devil when he was 12 years old. It was his birthday, in fact, and he had wished for something terrible. Sure, he had no birthday cake and none of his friends knew because he didn't _have _friends. Why people needed them was beyond him, no matter how lonely and abnormal he felt sometimes. They didn't understand him and he understood them too well, well enough to see all their imperfections and feel strangely dirty when they touched him- like he wasn't the same kind of creature. But back to the subject; he had wished for his heart to die on that fateful birthday so he would never be dependant on another human being.

He didn't realize that it had come true until he was fifteen and watched the life leave Myrtle's cold body and felt nothing. He'd read that even serial murders at least felt something. Apathy was supposed to be physically impossible to achieve since emotions are such an integral part of human society, and a person needs to have some part in society, even if you're a villain or low-life, to survive. Didn't explain why hermits lived so long, though.

And that was another thing. On his 20th birthday he'd wished to never die. The very idea of going into either some abyss or even worse, an afterlife where he'd be forced to associate with his fellow creatures for all eternity sickened him. If he did die and there was an afterlife (He'd decided that he would end up in hell by now), he hoped that he would get his own cell, far away from everybody else. He couldn't even stand his Death Eaters, pathetic suck-ups that they were. He had held their wives and children, screaming and begging and drooling and bleeding, before their eyes and slowly broken bones in their bodies until they caved in and agreed to join him. Another advantage to having no emotions was that he lost his conscience, which he was sure would have been constantly on his back if he'd retained it. Nagini kind of worked as one now, but she was in favor of the massacres because it meant more food for her, so he supposed she didn't count. Or maybe she did, and the conscience wasn't really as pure and good as they told you in Sunday school. Ah yes, he remembered with an empty grin how he'd shredded the flesh from the bones of the horrible Miss. Harper, the woman who had constantly taken out her frustration and anger at life on him in front of his class mates, humiliating him and enjoying it. He was sure she never felt the same satisfaction he did when he felt her blood go watery and cold in his hands, her heart long-still and limbs stiff.

But there was no time for such memories. Victory was in his hands, the broken body of James Potter lying in a pitiful and wholly unimpressive heap at his feet. Seeing Wormtail heading for the stairs, he shot a Crucio at him with a sneer and stepped carefully over his writhing body. The stairs were new and painted a cheery shade of yellow, stained now with rubble, scraps of wood from splintered furniture, and splattered with the blood of the man who had most likely painted them in the first place. It was almost beautiful.

The mother and child were all left in this house, Wormtail's cowardly self having made a run for it the moment he released the curse. He wouldn't punish him for that, since having his informant caught so soon in the game and before he could confess the rest of the members of the Order of the Phoenix would be inconvenient. And he was a man of precision, every setback that incompetence caused being meticulously punished as it should be, sometimes with a mere torture curse, sometimes with the death of a loved one. Sometimes he even killed the offender themselves, but always made sure to do that in front of their parents if he did.

He could hear Lily Potter's frantic whispers, obviously an attempt to protect her child from harm in what time she had left, and would have felt wistful if his heart hadn't been replaced with a dead organ that only served to pump poisoned blood through his scarred veins. One morning years ago he'd awakened with a burning feeling in them, and it had been the last thing he'd felt. He wondered if his heart was in Hell somewhere, burning, while he said the words, "_Avada Kedavra!" _ a second time, the mother's felled body serving as a stage to execute the infernal child.

Wide green baby eyes were the last thing he saw, knowing that something had gone horribly wrong. He couldn't find it within himself to care that he was sort of dying, resolving to bow to Satan should he run into him.

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End Satanism.

Just a random one-shot… Review if you want (it will make me very happy)


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